Timetable for SM Lower Tier Development

why not seize the pleasure at once?

So there has been some talk and speculation about how the lower tiers are going to form and I figure I'd address it in a central post.

What's currently happened is that UU has entered the Beta stage, and RU currently has an Alpha ladder. These labels may seem a bit arbitrary but they do have some purpose. When a tier is in a Beta phase it is in the initial stages of tiering. Each tiering council may do this differently, but it is good to give the tier some time to develop. Unlike OU, lower tiers do not start with an initial banlist. This makes things a bit messy at the start. Given the likelihood of numerous bans, these stats are a bit volatile and may not necessarily represent the future of the metagame with so much happening in a short period of time. We can't base lower tiers off of these stats, which is where Alpha tiers come in. Alpha tiers are purely "just for fun", and their usage doesn't really mean anything. Right now, the RU Alpha ladder is based on the UU Alpha stats and people were under the impression that NU Alpha would have a ladder based off of the RU Alpha stats. However, at this point NU Alpha would be so far removed from where the actual tier is going to come from (it would essentially be based off of 2 untiered, just for fun ladders) that I would rather not do this. So the plan is essentially to let Alpha tiers be based off of Beta stats of the above tier, and Beta tiers to be based off of the stats of the first month the tier exits Beta. That leaves us with the follow schedule:

why not seize the pleasure at once?

As you're probably aware, there were some complications with getting usage stats over the past few months that put a wrench in the above timetable. We'll hopefully be able to have full stats for the month of May, and with that in mind there will be a few small changes.

June: NU Beta Begins
July: PU Beta Begins, NU Exits Beta

That means PU Beta will be made from June's NU stats. Although it's not ideal, it will rectify the delay caused by the issues with the usage stats.